Turbulent boundary layer measurements over flat surfaces coated by nanostructured marine antifoulings

Whilst recent developments of nanotechnology are being exploited by chemists and marine biologists to understand how the completely environmentally friendly foul release coatings can control marine biofouling and how they can be developed further, the understanding of the hydrodynamic performances of these new generation coatings is being overlooked. This paper aims to investigate the relative boundary layer, roughness and drag characteristics of some novel nanostructured coatings, which were developed through a multi-European and multi-disciplined collaborative research project AMBIO (2010), within the framework of turbulent flows over rough surfaces. Zero-pressure-gradient, turbulent boundary layer flow measurements were conducted over flat surfaces coated with several newly developed nanostructured antifouling paints, along with some classic reference surfaces and a state-of-the-art commercial coating, in the Emerson Cavitation Tunnel (ECT) of Newcastle University. A large flat plane test bed that included interchangeable flat test sections was used for the experiments. The boundary layer data were collected with the aid of a two-dimensional DANTEC Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) system. These measurements provided the main hydrodynamic properties of the newly developed nanostructured coatings including local skin friction coefficients, roughness functions and Reynolds stresses. The tests and subsequent analysis indicated the exceptionally good frictional properties of all coatings tested, in particular, the drag benefit of some new nanostructured coatings in the Reynolds number range investigated. The rapidly decreasing roughness function trends of AKZO19 and AKZO20 as the $$ k_{s}^{ + } $$ increases were remarkable along with the dissimilar roughness function character of all tested coatings to the well-known correlation curves warranting further research at higher Reynolds numbers. The wall similarity concept for the Reynolds stresses was only validated for the transitionally rough surfaces from $$ (y + \varepsilon)^{ + } \approx 100 $$ up to the end of the boundary layer.